Captured! A Strange Creature

“What is it? A strange creature captured above Yale, British Columbia” —Daily British Colonist, July 4, 1884

By way of introduction, this story is fiction. I’ve been writing family stories for the past few months, so I wanted to give you a heads up that this is made up. I got the idea when I was in about 7th grade, when a teacher from Orchard Junior High School (Wenatchee, WA, circa 1962), took my class on a field trip to look for Bigfoot.

On retrospect, I understand that this creative teacher had taken a popular local legend and turned it into a teachable moment: we learned how to track animals along the creek sand and through the forest. We learned to identify edible plants and brewed our own nettle tea. It was a whole fun day full of nature studies woven together with the exciting stories of how we were in Bigfoot country.

I became if not a total Bigfoot believer, then certainly an aficionado of the big guy, also called Sasquatch.

Then recently, I became bemused by a famous newspaper article from 1884 that alleged some railroad men had captured a teenage Bigfoot. As I dug deeper, the story got mixed up with an escaped circus sideshow performer named Jacko. A more dedicated researcher than I am wrote a book that I read; stir in childhood memories, and a story was born.

Captured! A Strange Creature

“What is it? A strange creature captured above Yale, British Columbia” —Daily British Colonist, July 4, 1884

Fedor Adrianovich Jeftichew, born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia in 1868 heard the train coming down the mountain headed into the Yale station seven miles away. The whistle carried sharp and clear through the morning air, getting up an unkindness of ravens off a kill in the woods. A hundred sooty birds screamed back at the train, imitating its screech until the sound seemed to gather and arrow down toward Tunnel #4 where it was swallowed by the dark.

The real Jacko: Fedor Adrianovich Jeftichew better known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, was a famous Russian sideshow performer who toured Europe with his father, the ‘Wild Man from the Kostroma Forest’, in 1873 and was brought to the United States of America in 1884 by P.T. Barnum.

Fedor, called Jacko since his father first began to tour him as a sideshow freak, was walking the rails and could see Tunnel #4 not far ahead and heard the oncoming train. He left the railbed, skidding down the cinder slope at a place where rail ties were stacked up in a yard, smelling of green creosote.

He saw the boy then, on the far side of the tracks by the eastern bluff. The train had picked up speed since leaving Boston Bar the best part of twenty miles ago, and Jacko could see it entering a long turn along the Fraser River. He had been headed for shelter behind the rail tie stacks, but he was surprised by the boy and his hesitation at the rails like a nervous young buck at a stream. “Cross now or don’t cross,” he thought. He dropped his pack and ran toward the boy shouting.

The boy stood as if consumed by the noise of the oncoming train. He looked up at the swirl of screaming ravens, then back at the train, as if he didn’t understand the connection between the rails and the ravens and the oncoming train. He put a foot on the rail as if it mystified him, as if he were encountering it for the first time.

Jacko had no such hesitation. He didn’t think. He hurtled over the track and collided with the boy as the train arrived and rushed by. They rolled together down the cinders. Jacko stood crouched over the stunned boy as the hot air from the iron wheels blew back the fur that covered his head, face, and hands. The boy under him growled and snapped. Jacko felt his immense strength and pulled back to look at who he thought was a boy but in fact was a creature who looked remarkably like him, Jacko. The boy was covered in dark fur about an inch and a half long except for his hands. His forearms were much longer than Jacko’s, and when he struggled out from Jacko’s protective hold, he rested them on the ground in front of him.

In the quivering air and noise of the train passing above, the two lookalikes stared at each other, each one wondering what the other one was. Jacko’s mind ran a mouse-in-a-maze pattern looking for a way to call the dark, hairy boy. “Is he like me?”

Jacko thought of his father who had been as ugly and hairy as both his father before him and his son due to the inherited syndrome called hypertrichosis. He and Jacko had toured all of Europe as sideshow freaks, “Jo-jo the Dog-Faced Boy.” Jacko remembered briefly the faces that had jeered and pointed and spat and poked. They had traveled for a while with a bearded lady who his father said was like them. And for a while on the Prague circuit, a mountain gorilla had joined the circus, screaming inside his barred cage, baring his teeth, gripping and pulling endlessly at the cage bars as the terrified faces of the ghostly crowds passed by.

One night on a long rail trip through the Caucasus Mountains, he finally broke the bars and hurled himself off the moving train at a place no one knew how to find again. Maybe he had lived and maybe he had died, but Jacko was certain this creature in front of him was not like the gorilla, something other, some other order of someone altogether.

”Are you all right?” He pointed to his head and patted his legs with their blue military pants. “Okay?” Jacko had traveled with people of all languages and spoke rough and ready versions of many tongues. He had known the deaf, the mute, the traumatized silent and knew ways of communicating with them all. But when he looked into the hairy boy’s brown, simian eyes, he saw no flicker of recognition that communication was being attempted.

He put both hands on the boy’s shoulders and just looked him in the eyes. In that quiet, he heard the terrified crying as if in his own mind. He understood this then was the voice of the hairy boy. He tugged the child toward him, and the boy collapsed into his arms in an anguished embrace.

Jacko rocked him as the last cars roared by overhead. The ravens scattered like hot cinders blown back from the stack. He saw two men standing on the caboose. The men spotted the two of them and pointed, shouting with excitement as they disappeared into Tunnel #4 still pointing and shouting. The second he heard the sudden screech of brakes, Jacko understood the train was stopping.

“Run!”

The only way out was up the eastern bluff. He and the boy began the ascent, grabbing for roots. Four men ran out of the tunnel and gave chase. The climbing was perilous for all of them. Jacko moved fast, but the boy was a natural climber, grabbing rocks and brush and scrambling straight up. Jacko was more strategic, making for the edge where the bluff broke off into the forest. The four men were agile and focused on the boy. Jacko tried to mind-shout him to move out of the open toward the forest, but he couldn’t feel anyone listening. The terrified child scrambled up onto a projecting shelf of rock where he could neither go up nor down while the men corralled him from all sides.

Jacko made the safety of the trees and climbed up, looked out. He could hear the men discussing how to capture the boy alive. The man they called Craig crawled out on his hands and knees until he was about forty-five feet above the child. He began to throw rocks at the boy, who cowered and barked on his rock. One good shot by Craig hit him on the head. He fell unconscious off the rock and rolled down the bluff, his body stopping halfway down, the men jumping and shouting after him.

The men gathered around the boy’s body, poking and kicking him to make sure he was unconscious. Craig suggested tying him up with the rope from the caboose bell, so one of the men ran away down the hill, disappeared briefly into the tunnel and returned with the bell rope. Between them, they trussed the boy and lowered him to the bottom of the bluff. It took all four of them to heave the boy’s body up onto the tracks. Jacko soon saw the train emerge from Tunnel #4 and steam off toward Yale, the hairy boy’s body visible just inside the baggage car.

As the red caboose disappeared around the bend and a kind of silence fell, Jacko dropped down out of his tree, scrambled down the bluff and crossed over the tracks to retrieve his pack, which had only one working strap. His heart was racing not just from the chase, but having felt so much so quickly for the boy and then to see him so violently captured and taken away. He knew how much like the hairy boy he looked. “It could have been me.” But it was as if the rail men hadn’t even seen him separate from the creature or noticed him climbing up into the woods.

Jacko spotted the length of white rope on an alder, so white and slim it could have been taken for a branch. Pieces of rag hung moving in a light breeze from vine maple and tag alder surrounding a rough circle of stones and grass. A sacred place, then. He had seen rag tying and offerings left at springs in Ireland and England. The found rope seemed just the right length to do the job of replacing the broken strap on the other side. It seemed newer than the bits of tattered flags, faded yellow or red or blue. Jacko slipped it off the white alder.

The length of rope had a cool strength in his hands that reminded him of years on the road with the circus. He remembered the early mornings with mist rising from a river, dew cold through his leather boots. The crew would haul out the massive canvas guy lines and stake ropes to secure the main tent. The reef points were untied, allowing the canvas to be spread out. The halyards were raised, hoisting the tent poles into place. With the tent firmly anchored, the sideshow performers began setting up their booths. They strung up ropes to hang their banners and cords to tie down their props.

This rope seemed cooperative, and he knew from experience that wasn’t always the case. Jacko looked around for an offering to leave in return for the rope. He picked up a large black raven feather at his feet. He smoothed its long, shiny length between his fingers, feeling all the wind it had flown for a few seconds, then tucked it into the knot end of a red rag tie.

Jacko shrugged into his pack, looking up at the ravens. They had fallen eerily silent and were now dropping back down into the forest in a funnel formation, around and around and down until all of them silently disappeared. Jacko mentally marked the spot on the eastern bluff of the river, closer to the rail yard he knew was known as Spuzzum Flats, a few miles this side of the town of Yale.

Jacko reversed his journey to the north, and followed the tracks southwest after the train. He hadn’t ever wanted to see Yale again, but his feet followed after the boy of their own accord, as if his heart was in his boots. “It could have been me.”

Two miles down the tracks, Jacko jumped down into a creek bed for water. He was standing there in the dappled shade when he heard again the mutter of the ravens. Not far off this time. He must be near either their kill or their roost.

Jacko got very still, so he could hear the low mutterings as he eased through the forest. He followed a moss-covered deer trail under the cedars and vine maple. The woodland smell of wild strawberries made him dizzy with hunger. He sat down under the swaying bough of a cedar and dug out an apple and a piece of bread. He ate as quietly as possible, stilling himself, trying to decipher the tone of the gathered ravens he knew couldn’t be far away now. He worried about the fate of the boy, who had felt almost like his own, however brief their moment together.

He stood up and stepped cautiously back onto the deer trail. The breeze shifted. He smelled a new smell. The smell of blood. Jacko moved like a shadow off the trail and under the trees until the forest opened into a rough clearing. In the center the sawn stump of a cedar eight feet or more across shed fresh sawdust onto the forest floor. He could see the notch the sawyer had cut for a foothold. Jagged shards on the falling side stuck up and through the corpse of a huge creature that had been ten feet tall in life, covered with brown fur or hair.

Jacko felt the shock travel up out of the earth through his feet to race up to his heart like ground lightning. He reached a compulsive hand out to grip a branch to steady himself. He had never seen or felt such violence before.

The belly was flayed open and ravens surrounded the open body cavity, worrying after gobbets of intestine and flying off to nearby trees to eat. Two young ravens worried at the eyes and another set of twins pulled at the long tongue lolling out of its mouth.

Jacko saw right away this was another creature like the boy. He could see the long, leathery dugs flung up over her shoulder, and it came to him that this could be the boy’s mother. Her skullcase was blasted off and being argued over a dozen feet away, and by this he guessed that she had been shot by one of his kind, a human.

Jacko had left Adrian, his father, in a drunken, maddened fury in Vancouver. Jacko had finally said, “Let’s go.” He wanted nothing more than to be accepted for what and who he was, to escape the world his father had given him of Jo-jo the Dog-faced Boy. He urged his grotesquely hairy father to leave with him, insisting as he had since Prague that nothing could be worse than this existence. But a lifetime of alcoholic rage against the fate of his body had left Adrian trapped like the mountain gorilla inside the safety cage of circus life. “I’m going,” Jacko said, and went, hoping to find a different place and different people.

The black shapes of a hundred ravens rising and falling over the body made Jacko dizzy. The blood continued to drip thick and slow out of the mother’s body into the widening dark pool in the ferns. The ravens were yelling again in a head-splitting, disorienting cacophony.

Then the ravens fell silent. They saw or heard something Jacko didn’t, but he was too nauseous to look. He leaned over and vomited. His pulse raced, and for a while, he could not stop retching. He cleaned his mouth with wet moss, spitting and coughing out the grit. Too ill to move for a moment, he remained hunched over. Then the illness passed, and he heard again the silence of the ravens, which only his own noise marred. He lurched up cautiously and looked again out into the clearing. Jacko felt he was the uninvited guest at some terrible ritual slaughter attended on by the ravens, who were going about their grim business of feasting on the dead. Some human had come here and shot this remarkable creature, and that was part of his nausea, not just the blood.

He turned his head and tried to listen for what had silenced the big black corvids. But instead of a sound, a smell, a different smell. A bit skunky. Feral. A feeling came with it, both a foreboding and an anticipation. The smell came closer and wrapped around him. Jacko instinctively put his back to a Doug fir. He heard the bent back whoosh of a kicked aside cedar bough. They were tall shapes of shadow among the shadows of stumps and snags.

Then they were there: five of the big dark-haired creatures closed in on him. Not in an attack but in a curious circle. Male and female, all towering two or three feet over his five. He opened his speech-mind to them. No words, though, only a swirl of group emotions, the way an eddy in the river will swirl with currents and upwellings and countercurrents: bewilderment, grief, fear, fight, flight. He willed himself first to peace, so he wouldn’t get sucked into the whirlpool of clashing emotions, then he thought an image of the boy hugging him and just held it there.

The group of creatures quieted and eventually all looked at him. They didn’t poke, prod or act astonished at the little hairy man dressed in people's clothes. He wondered what he smelled like to them or if he’d been roughing it long enough to smell like a root system. As best Jacko could, he acted out the meeting and the kidnapping, imagining it as clearly as he could, so they could receive.

When he finished, he pointed southwest toward Spuzzum Flats and Yale. As far as he could tell, there was no discussion. They rose as one and moved as one back to the trail. Soon Jacko was in a line with the creatures who hadn’t even pinched him to see if he was real, trotting his short legs along at a good pace with their long strides.

He noticed how broad their feet were, leaving seventeen and eighteen inch prints behind in the muddy areas. At one place, the largest female stepped off the path and came back with a large burden basket woven of cedar bark. With no warning, one of the male creatures picked Jacko up and put him in the basket. The lid came down and was fastened with a stick through a loop. His heart raced as panic threaded his veins with fear. Even as he began to push against the cedar withes, a warm calm washed over him, and he began to bounce rhythmically against the woman’s back as the group picked up their pace to a long-legged run. Jacko half propped, half curled himself up in the bottom of the basket. He felt strange, almost paralyzed in place, a place so silent it was almost like a ringing in his ears.

Then Jacko felt a small soul-shake. He rose up out of the basket through the secured lid and saw his body jostling gently against the body of the running Giantess. He rose above the running group and floated with them without effort or volition.

Ahead on the trail, he saw a white rope. He rose higher and saw the rope came up out of the Fraser River and ran along some line of rock and hill with a smooth and sinuous grace. It marked the landscape along a curving and recurving line Jacko could almost see. White as a new lariat, the rope seemed to imply a magnetic line.

The White Rope came down from the remotest northern places, having crossed the Siberian land bridge, laid down by the great shamans and Giants who ruled the Ice Age. It ran between the geologic world and the Otherworld. White as bone, thin and luminous as the new moon, the White Rope snaked along river valleys, down into gorges, and up through mountain passes. Like an albino snake, it ran through wildflower meadows where the oldest megafauna rose and flourished through the millennia and went extinct. And still the White Rope moved through time. It was woven and placed by those who could see, those who could follow, those who could cross over into the Otherworld and back again. It wasn’t for many of Jacko’s kind to see or travel the Great White Rope, but carried on the back of the Giantess, he saw, and out of the depths of his childhood memories of Russian folktales, he recognized it for what it was. He wondered at it, but sideshow freaks see many strange and wondrous and magical things down in the back alleys of the traveling circus, and it also seemed to him that while touring in England, he had heard of The Old Straight Track that followed the mystical ley lines.

The group of running creatures turned to run along the White Rope, their feet touching, not touching it, and with a kind of whoosh, Jacko felt they were entering a zone of heightened power. Now they were running along the Rope as it led out of the open foothills through the most ancient of forests where elflight glowed faintly in hidden springs and canopy light filtered green from above and owls watched their swift passage through time.

Jacko drifted back into his small, hairy body with his blue circus uniform jacket with the gold cord and brass buttons. His blue military pants with the stripe down the side. His high black boots, once brightly polished, now scuffed and dirty from his long journey from Vancouver. Adrian had dressed him up like a hurdy-gurdy, organ grinder monkey in this mock uniform, and they were the only clothes he had ever known.

The cavalcade stopped at the edge of the clearcut and let Jacko out of the burden basket. There was no White Rope in sight. This clearcut may once have been an old growth forest, but was now a wasteland of stumps tied to earth in a tight tangle of blackberry vines and wild huckleberry bushes. Jacko scrambled up on a stump to get a better view.

From where he stood, Jacko could see the black and white rail sign that said Spuzzum Flats. The train tracks disappeared into another tunnel on the final three-quarter run into Yale—although the road route was seven miles, as Jacko remembered. Spuzzum Flats was a wide place where the building of the tunnel had been staged and the machine shops built. Jacko could see a couple of miner’s shacks, what might be a tavern, and a large metal box with bars that was the local jail.

September 24, 1884

“Respected Yale veterinarian and keeper of the livery stable, Mr. George Tilbury, was committed to prison for his own protection on a charge of insanity. During the day, he tore off every stitch of clothing and thrust the articles through the cell wicket. On September 23, he was found stark naked and stone dead in his cell. The deceased was 45 years old. Many years ago, he was a theatrical agent, subsequently settling in Victoria as veterinary surgeon. His mind gave symptoms of failing earlier in the summer.”

—Daily British Colonist

June 30th, 1884

Word came to Mr. George Tilbury about a strange creature captured above Yale. The messenger described the creature as five feet tall, covered with an inch and a half of dark hair except for its face and hands. It had a flat face and large feet. The railroad men who had captured him thought he should be placed in the veterinarian’s care.

Tilbury made all haste by horseback to the jail, where the creature was being penned until further decisions could be made about its fate. When Dr. Tilbury arrived, he looked into the freestanding metal room through the bars. Inside were two wire bunks and one very frightened creature who growled and barked.

”What are you feeding this animal?” Tilbury demanded of Costerton, who had escorted him to the cage.

A bit abashed, Costerton admitted that it hadn’t occurred to him to give the creature either food or water during the twenty-four hours it had been in captivity.

“Get it some water,” Tilbury said, then turned to the only woman in the small crowd of about a dozen men. She was a native woman who understood perfectly the nature of the hairy boy. Her people called them Big Brother, but she was of no motivation to enlighten the white doctor. However, when asked her opinion about his diet, she left and came back with a tip or two of blackberries and a half gallon of goat milk.

Costerton and Tilbury were cautious about opening the cage door for fear the strong creature would rush them, but he remained cowering beneath the bunks like a barn owl will flatten itself against a furthest wall to escape attention. The berries, milk and water were lined up on the stone pavers, and the door slammed and locked again with a heavy black skeleton key that Mac the barman kept behind the till in the tavern.

The onlookers jostled for their chance to peer through the cage door, tall hats and short hats bobbling up and down, but there was nothing to see but a lump of furred shadow under an iron bunk.

The entire crew of an independent logging operation had come out of the nearby woods to see what the uproar was about. About fifteen men turned away from the jail to the tavern that faced it across Main Street and jostled for the door.

The bar was a tight little log cabin not much bigger than the metal jail, just a sixteen-foot pen with two doors and a corrugated tin roof. It had been built snug against a low hill by the miners twenty years earlier, the same miners who had burned both native villages to the ground in 1858. Man's gotta drink, and it didn't take much to throw together a structure that would keep booze oiling the spirit of community for decades to come.

Inside, the air was acrid with tobacco smoke and stale beer. A sawdust floor that hadn't been swept out maybe ever crunched underfoot. One window, covered with paper greased with pig fat, was coated with a build-up of smoke and dirt until it was only a translucent smudge in the wall. Dim oil lamps cast shadows across half-sawn log tables, their light barely reaching the corners. Mounted deer antlers drew shapes on the walls. The sound of hobnailed boots and men's rough, shouting voices overrode the quiet murmur of the two women at the Native table by the back door.

Jim, the owner, had accurately felt the mood of the crowd shift from spectacle to drinking and told Mac the barkeep to line 'em up. The beer mugs kept flying down the slick bar and willing hands grabbed them as they came.

George Tilbury and Craig Costerton took their pints and found a back table. A log to the mid-back was none too comfortable, so the men leaned forward with their elbows on the rough-hewn table, which gave them a conspiratorial air. Tilbury was some kind of veterinarian, the only one between here and Vancouver, but at one time, he had also been a theatrical agent, and he was quite taken with Costerton's idea.

"We should dress that little fellow up in one of those hurdy-gurdy monkey outfits and take it to that circus in Vancouver and sell it," Costerton suggested.

Tilbury was a man of larger ideas. "I heard that the circus burned up in the Vancouver fire a few weeks ago. But we could take it to London on an exhibition train." Every time he slurped his beer, his mustache and beard would float up in it, and he'd swipe it dry with his flanneled forearm.

There was a rifle behind the bar and several firearms scattered among the patrons when the first rocks hit the tin roof. Craig Costerton had just been leaning forward to say to George Tilbury,, "Now, that is one mighty fine idea," and to ask him something about a private boxcar when the first volley came. Everyone stopped talking in shock and looked up at the roof. Silence hung in the air for a beat, broken only by the slow drip of beer from an overturned mug.

"What in tarnation?" muttered a logger, his eyes wide.

Another volley of rocks pelted the roof, sounding like a stampede of miniature horses.

"It's the end times!" shouted someone from the back, voice cracking with panic.

"Don't be daft," snapped Tilbury, "It's clearly a..." His words were cut short as a particularly large rock impact sent a shower of dust raining down from the ceiling. Men ducked and covered their drinks, priorities clearly in order.

Over at the Native table, Annie York was just reminding her sister Bea that their uncle Chief Khahtsahlano had described seeing two little Big Brothers in captivity at a circus in Vancouver earlier in the year, a father and a son, not a thing to interest the whites. In the astonished lull after the first rocks struck and turned everyone's attention to the ceiling, Annie and Bea got up and left by the back outhouse door.

The barkeep hauled his Winchester lever action 1873 out from under the bar and took aim at the roof. Owner Jim, a small guy anxiously working the till, yelled, "Don't shoot a hole in my roof, you damn fool!" and launched himself at Mac's shooting arm. Mac's one bullet hit smack between two deer antlers, a real kill shot before the impact of Jim's weight brought them both down into the slurry of sawdust and beer that was the floor.

Four of the loggers were dislocated Americans who had followed the cut north after the Nez Perce War of 1877.

"Clem! It's them Injuns! They tracked us down!"

"It's them escaped Canadian Nez Perce!"

"C'mon, Joey, help me build a shelter!"

More thunder on the roof. You haven't heard noise until you hear rocks thrown down on a corrugated tin roof. The racket rivals a battlefield.

Clem and Joey put their shoulders to three half log tables while their buddies in red and blue neckerchiefs manhandled a fourth to make a shelter. "It's the end of the world!” screamed the scrawny guy from the back, and he ran forward and dove under the makeshift shelter.

Mac and Jim crawled out from behind the bar. When Jim saw the destruction of his tables, he took a flying leap and latched on to Clem's back, "You sonuvabitch! You're gonna pay for this!" Clem was a more than sizable guy. He swung back and forth like a crazed bull trying to dislodge Jim, who hung on like a monkey.

Mac scrambled for his Winchester, sat back on his haunches, cocking it, then he blew a hole in the roof, which pretty much sent half of the tin sheets flying out of their grommets.

George and Craig stumbled across the room, drinks in hand, heading for the door, trying to dodge Clem and Jim. Joey grabbed the antlers off the wall, put them over his head and charged Jim but caught George in the neck. George's beer went flying and the glass struck the table that was the top of the makeshift shelter. Beer ran down like rain and the scrawny guy inside yelled, "It's the apocalypse!"

Just as the men thought the worst was over, the barrage of rocks changed direction and began pummeling the front door. Men manhandled more tables and benches and hid behind them. Costerton and Tilbury stationed themselves on either side of the window. Craig poked a nervous hole through the paper and slid his rifle barrel through. As the rocks pounded on the log walls, Craig jumped and pulled the trigger without looking. The bang of the bullet ricocheting off the metal box of the jail added to the mayhem.

Tilbury was at the door when it began to shake violently. Something or someone extremely tall and powerful was trying to get in. The guy inside the table shelter crawled out to see what was going on and then passed out cold on the barroom floor. Mac, rushing to help George, tripped over him. "Goddammit, George, hold the door," he yelled as he went down and staggered to get back up. Clem was still trying to shake Jim off his back while also trying to stuff the passed out guy back into the shelter. At least four guys managed to brace their bodies against the door, which was being shaken violently not at the door handle but high up near the lintel.

It was five minutes of mayhem, but it seemed like the Battle of the Alamo to the men inside, frightened into a stupor and without any idea of what or who was doing the attacking. Clearly, the enemy must be many, tall and powerful.

When silence finally fell, the men remained frozen in various poses of defense or cowering. They exchanged nervous glances, each silently daring the others to be the first to check outside. The air was thick with tension, everyone certain that another attack could come at any moment.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Into that uneasy moment came a quiet knock. Everyone jumped and every rifle and revolver swung to cover the door.

The knock came again, quiet and small, like a child or a woman, no louder than the quiet peck of a raven at some insignificant bit of fat.

”It’s a trick, it’s a trick,” Mac muttered as the knock came again, gently insistent. They could hear weak fingers trying the iron latch, but the big wooden bolt had been shot from inside at the first attack.

It was Tilbury who finally put his head down to the level of the latch and whispered, “Who’s there?”

”My name is Fedor Jeftichew. May I enter this fine drinking establishment?”

Opinion was clearly divided, but Tilbury drew back the bar and opened the door a crack to peer out,

Jacko knew this would have to be the performance of a lifetime. He slipped into the dimly lit bar and stepped up onto a box balanced on a chair to give himself a better view of all the faces frozen in a rictus of astonishment and fear below him. His brass buttons winked in the light and his military suit gave him an aura of authority. He could smell the spilled beer, the fetid sawdust and human fear in the reek of their sweat.

He pitched his voice low and rhythmic. "Hello, I am Fedor Jeftichew, late of St. Petersburg, Russia. You don't know me, but I know you for a very fine people. You are a community. You don't know me, but I thank you for welcoming me, a stranger like your own brother into your house.

“Listen to my voice. It's been a long, exciting day, hasn't it? So much commotion, so much noise. But now, everything is calm. The danger has passed. You're safe now, all of you. Safe and relaxed.”

The box on the chair wobbled beneath him, but Jacko found and kept his balance easily. Jacko had been taught the basics by the circus hypnotist, and in theory he knew it should work with a crowd because Baxter had told him he had the gift. “Not many people do,” Baxter had cautioned, “and they are usually politicians or cult leaders. It will probably be useless to you as a sideshow freak, but if you ever need it, the trick is in the voice and in the mind.” Jacko pulled Baxter into his thoughts now as he began to hold the group in thrall.

“Take a deep breath. Feel the tension leaving your body with each exhale. That's right. The noise on the roof? It was just a passing storm. Nothing to worry about now.

“You're all good people. Hardworking, honest folk. You protect your own. And sometimes, strange things happen that we don't understand. But that's okay. We don't need to understand everything.”

Jacko shook his head, trying to remove the memory of the night he had escaped from the circus, Saturday, June 12, 1886. Baxter had distracted the guard for him, putting himself in danger as Jacko thrashed his way through blackberry bushes and ran. The fledgling settlement of Vancouver comprised no more than a thousand buildings on a small pocket of land along the Burrard Inlet. The Canadian Pacific Railroad had just finished the Vancouver terminus, and the circus had been right behind.

He had slept rough in the hills. On Sunday morning, June 13, he saw Vancouver burn until only three buildings were left standing. The place where the circus had been camping went up in the inferno—Baxter, his father, his friends, horses and tigers and bears. Barkers and ballerinas. Torn between the pain and the horror and the miracle of his eerily timed escape, he had accidentally found the dirt wagon road to Yale.

He beat back the memories. This work required a clear mind.

“Now, about the creature in the jail. It's just a small thing, isn't it? Harmless really. But it doesn't belong here. It needs to go home, back to its own kind. And you, being the good people you are, you want to help it, don't you?

“Imagine how proud you'll feel, knowing you did the right thing. Imagine the stories you'll tell about your kindness and wisdom.”

Jacko desperately wished Baxter was here to tell him if he was doing this circus trick correctly. He’d never considered he might need this skill—learning hypnosis was just something to do while the circus traveled long miles across the West.

”So, we're going to let the strange creature go. It's the right thing to do. And you'll feel so good about it. So calm, so proud.”

Jacko slowed his voice to a murmur. He deliberately didn’t think of the child in the jail. He didn’t think of what would happen if he were exposed as a fraud. This was a dangerous crowd, he felt that. Emotions were running high, which is part of why he had been able to get their attention so quickly. But he knew his mind had to be clear as springwater to collect everyone together in one place in his head.

“Now, who has the key? Ah, yes, you there with the fine rifle. What's your name? Mac, is it? Mac, you're going to be the hero today. You're going to open that cage and let the creature go. And everyone here will remember how brave and kind you were.

“Shall we go outside now? Nice and calm. Everything is fine. We're just going to do this simple task, and then we can all go back to our drinks and our stories. Doesn't that sound nice?"

George Tilbury opened the door wide, and everyone with just a mutter and a murmur drifted across the street to the jail. Jacko jumped down to their level and immediately felt the fear that always came when the tall heads of people surrounded him. That usually meant being prodded with a stick or getting spit on his uniform if not his face.

Jacko’s hold on the group's mind began to slip immediately. “Where are all the rocks?” someone asked, and everyone looked around. “If it was hail, where are the hailstones?”

Jacko skipped ahead and jumped up on the hitching post in front of the jail to regain his height advantage. His boots slipped on the steel, but he grabbed for the rough wooden post. “There’s the child,” Jacko continued his quiet patter with an inner desperation, “so small, so harmless. Did one of you shoot a big one a few days ago? Mr. George Tilbury, congratulations on a dead shot. You must be very proud. She was a big one. You didn’t report it to the authorities or anyone else. I think that was a wise choice.”

Jacko jumped down and gently led Mac’s fingers with the key to the lock as Tilbury started to stumble into an explanation about the big shoot. “I almost forgot about that. Craig, do you remember I told you about shooting that big female bear the other day?”

But before he could get further, the jailhouse door swung open as the crowd fell back with a gasp.

As the door opened, Jacko felt his carefully constructed spell shatter like glass. The world seemed to slow down, his senses heightening with the surge of adrenaline. He could smell the fear radiating from the boy, could feel the shift in the air as the crowd's mood turned from docile to dangerous. In that moment, Jacko realized that everything was about to change, for better or worse.

A brown storm erupted from the jail and landed with both arms and legs locked around Jacko. They were of a size, Jacko much the slighter, so he staggered under the force and weight of the scared child. His heart moved and his focus wavered, weakening the charm further. He had to loosen the hypnosis thread long enough to reach out to the boy. “You’re going to be okay.”

The boy clung tighter, and Jacko carefully loosened his grip. He projected an image of the Great White Rope to the boy. ”Follow the White Rope home. Everyone is waiting for you. Now go!”

Mac shook his head like a dog trying to dislodge a bee, “Why, you!”

Mac grabbed at Jacko and the clinging boy, and Costerton, too, snapped out of the spell and dove for Jacko’s legs. Jacko mind-shouted to the boy as he had once before, “Run!” The boy sprang five feet past the group then ran with a speed everyone would later say was preternatural. “No animal or person could run that fast, that’s for sure. And then it just disappeared right before our eyes!”

Costerton kicked Jacko down into the dirt. Jacko was on the ground, protecting his face with his arms. He’d had plenty of both stage and street fighting experience in the circus, but a hob-nailed boot landed on his ribs before he could gather himself. The kicks and blows came thick and fast. “Look! He’s one of them! Why is he all dressed up like a human? He looks like a monkey escaped from the zoo!”

Hands plucked and tore at his pants. His boots were yanked off and his socks and his military jacket stripped from him. The jacket was stomped into the ground until someone later picked it up where you can still see it on display at the Yale Historical Museum.

Jacko knew he had to find the strength to escape before anything else besides his ribs broke. For the briefest moment, he realized if he ran, he’d be breaking ties with humans and throwing his lot in with mysterious strangers who in some ways seemed more like him. Experience drove his mistrust. With a thrust of his heels and a wiry twist, he leapt onto Mac’s back, the tallest among the mob. Mac bucked, but Jacko rode him like a jockey, both legs locked under Mac’s chin, tightening, making his watery blue eyes bulge and mouth gasp like a fish for air.

Jacko tried desperately to reweave his spell. He put both dark-haired arms out over the milling crowd. He tried to empty his mind of his pain and his fear. Later, Costerton would say his eyes glowed red as a devil’s, and his whole body caught on fire, the hairy little man with a face like a mask like a native might carve and sell at a kiosk on the Seattle waterfront. Costerton and the others would always be confused about what they saw. Jacko began to say something none of them was ever able to remember because strangely, everyone got fed up with the whole scene and decided to go take a nap. Some went over to a wagon and climbed in. Others went back into the bar and crawled behind an overturned table and caught a few zzzs.

Tilbury decided he would ride home to Yale and explain all this to the sheriff. Or maybe the magistrate. Or his wife. He got on his horse, rode a quarter mile down the road and fell off by the creek. His head hit a rock that gave him a smashing headache he never did quite get over.

As Mac gave a final desperate gasp and his legs began to buckle beneath him, Jacko sprang off onto the ground, blood from a cheek cut dripping into the dust. He heaved one last, long breath out, one last, long glare of disbelief and a kind of hatred at the humans—his kind— distributed around the single block of the fair city of Spuzzum snoring under their hats. Then he turned and ran in the long footsteps of the escaping boy. No one was awake to take note of his less than spectacular speed and his inability to disappear into thin air. His run was more of an accelerated limp hampered by the kicks and punches he’d taken.

In the short window of time before he found the family, Jacko considered freedom. He had escaped the abuse of his father and life in a sideshow freak cage. Now, he had run from these men who seemed no better than his father in their eagerness to capture the boy, jail him, imprison and exhibit him. This had been Jacko’s fate. Here on the forest path, limping and bleeding, Jacko couldn’t see a way alone through the wilderness that might spell a freedom he could live with.

He found the family on the east bluff above the Great White Rope that he could see ascending from the river gorge below. Like a quiet crowd of shadows and lights, they gathered around him, closing ranks. The boy was on someone’s back, his face buried in the dark mane of fur. Jacko’s ribs and just about everywhere else was sore and swollen, but there was no time for repair. He was lifted up by powerful, kindly arms and put back into the burden basket.

“Always the cage!” he raged even as the group began to run along the mystical White Rope. Soon they entered the elflight of the old growth forest, and in this way they traveled unnoticed up the treacherous passes and gorges of the Fraser River.

Jacko put his fingers through the willow branches of the bouncing basket. “Where are we going?”

In reply, his mind was flooded with images of enormous cedar, hemlock, and spruce trees twenty feet across and thousands of years old. “Kwa-mist,” he heard over and over, “Kwa-mist.” Kwa-mist was home, their timeless refuge in the Great Bear Rainforest in the far north of British Columbia. As he rocked in the burden basket, Jacko tried to understand what had happened, to wonder if he had options. What would become of him now? Alone in the world, orphaned by fire, he had thought to find a place for himself among humans, but he hadn’t realized how deep the darkness was. They had stripped him naked and tried to kill him.

As the basket swayed with the Giantess’s movements, Jacko felt a strange mix of fear and hope. The world he knew was behind him, but what lay ahead? Would these creatures accept him, or would he always be an outsider? He thought of the boy, how easily he had communicated with him. Maybe, just maybe, he had found where he truly belonged. That was, of course, impossible—he was human, and they were…Other. As they followed the Great White Rope deeper into the wilderness, Jacko realized he was on a journey not just through the forest, but into a new life he could never have imagined.

The traveling family was far away when the disheveled townsfolk awoke from the longest village drunk any of them could remember. It was Jim who noticed the jail was open and the captive fled. A half dozen ravens had flown in and taken up positions on top of the jail and a couple of neighboring trees. They were having their own discussion while the men who could remember inexactly what had happened compared notes with the men who were just making up possible scenarios.

They were all standing around gawking and yapping about the eighteen inch running footprints in the dust and mud of the yard pointing out how the bare footprints of a much smaller and obviously human foot were interspersed. About that time, Dr. Hammington rode in from Yale. He’d been curious when he’d heard a description of the creature and had gotten up first thing to come see for himself. He’d helped Tilbury out of the creek, bandaged his nasty head wound and sent him on his way.

Hammington pushed his way through the crowd and knelt to examine the over-sized footprints. He slapped his hat on his knee in recognition, raising a little cloud of dust that made the ravens jump up and fly around squawking.

“Goddamn Sasquatches! I had a feeling!”

”But Doc, what about those little prints there beside it?”

”Bah! Sasquatches! The lot of them!”

Bonus Story: In the Raven Glade

The storm tore at the veil between worlds, stitching the Realworld and Otherworld together with threads of lightning. In its wake, giants ran. Jacko, hairy human runt, bounced in a cedar-woven burden basket on the Giantess's back, his world shrunk to the rhythmic thud of her footfalls and the basket's metronomic sway. The makeshift lid rattled with each of her impossibly long strides, tempting him with the illusion of escape. But Jacko knew the truth: his stubby legs could never match fleet-footed Rope-runners, and the loggers behind them thirsted for blood—his blood.

When the Giantess had first secured him in the basket, Jacko had used his people's voice. "Where are you taking me?" he asked, his tone a mix of fear and curiosity.

The Giantess's reply came not in words, but in a mind-thought that felt like a cool breeze in his head. "Kwa-mist." So Jacko knew he could get out if he wanted. The storm overhead seemed to be guiding the tribe north, a living, breathing entity that had appeared as soon as intent had rippled the group into a run.

But still, he fumed in his cage, but knew there was no going back to the angry loggers who had lost the little Kelsach boy due to one very small, very hairy human. If they caught him, they would jail him or kill him. They had already torn off his fine, hurdy-gurdy circus uniform, leaving him to run naked after the escaping tribe of Kelsach. Like them, he was covered with long, dark hair, but unlike them, he was only human, and being hairy did nothing to warm him as the cold rain began.

He had heard the Kelsach mind – talk about their destination, Kwa-mist, prehistoric home of the Kelsach people in the far north of British Columbia. They were running along the Great White Rope, that magical road that runs between the Realworld and Otherworld. Jacko had the impression he was in for a long, hungry ride. And a wet one. They seemed to be running straight into the heart of the storm, which was so large that it also trailed behind. Jacko, looking backwards from the Giantess’s traveling basket, could see the roiling purple and dark blue clouds like bruises in the rough elephant skin of the dusk.

The family moved under the canopy of the old growth forest where Jacko had first followed the ravens down to the corpse of the boy’s mother, impaled on a cedar shard, her head blown off by George Tilbury, who explained to anyone who would listen that he had thought she was a female bear. The great trees filtered the storm light into an eerie yellow and muffled the rumble of thunder. Up in the canopy, the massive treetops tossed like the heads of running horses in the wind. With each step, Jacko felt further removed from the human world he knew.

The orphan boy rode on the back of a big male, his flat, wrinkled face buried in the long black mane. As everyone entered the Raven Glade, they stopped and squatted in silence. Jacko‘s basket was opened, and he was lifted onto the ground. He found a tree to relieve himself, then came around to join the group. The smell of ozone from the storm mixed with the sharp sweetness of cedar. He hung back, unsure of what to expect. They had all worked together to free the boy from the jail, but he didn’t really know them. He was just starting to comprehend who they might be now that he understood that they were not like him. Not human, that is.

As a circus sideshow freak, Jacko was used to being poked and prodded, peered at and commented upon in multiple languages, all of which he knew, but he only had a taste of Kelsach mind – talk. It seemed more like the way wisps of many clouds gathered into a central storm cloud, many voices rumbling or murmuring until all at once they spoke as one. He knew they were talking, he just hadn’t broken the code yet, although when he had mind – shouted “run!” to the boy on two different occasions, the boy had run for his life.

As Jacko grappled with the alien concept of mind-talk, the group's collective grief seemed to pulse through the air, almost tangible in its intensity. The storm, momentarily subdued, gave way to an eerie stillness that only amplified the solemn atmosphere. In this heavy silence, Jacko became acutely aware of another presence - a scent that cut through even the petrichor of the rain-soaked forest. The smell from the mother's body was more pungent than yesterday's fresh blood smell. It reminded him of the ripe, gamey odor that would waft from the circus menagerie wagons when they were first opened after a long journey—a potent mixture of sweat, musk, and decay mingled with sawdust and straw.

When the Kelsach entered the clearing, all the ravens stopped feasting on the enormous corpse and flew up in a circle to land on tree branches, where they observed in silence with the occasional cackle of commentary.

As Jacko approached, a place was made for him on a hillock of moss. The boy was lifted down and placed beside him, and he promptly latched onto Jacko‘s neck. His leathery little fingers took a painful grip on Jacko’s shoulder hair. Jacko reached up and tried to ease his grip. The Giantess observed this, and mind-spoke a surface ripple to the boy, who moved to sit between Jacko‘s legs while preparations were made. Jacko felt cold and miserable sitting out naked in the rain, the tree not much shelter from a storm that seemed to be settling in. As the storm enveloped them, Jacko noticed how the Kelsach seemed to lean into the wind, their fur glistening with rain, as if embracing an old friend. He felt his own alienation keenly in that moment, a creature caught between worlds, belonging to neither the storm nor the shelter.

The tribe seemed at first to be waiting out the storm, which only seemed to be intensifying. A couple of younger Kels loped into the dense underbrush, returning moments later with makeshift cups fashioned from broad leaves and springy moss. These natural vessels brimmed with mountain huckleberries, their deep purple skins glistening with raindrops. Jacko, his stomach clenching with hunger, eagerly accepted his portion. The berries tore open between his teeth, flooding his mouth with a complex flavor – a perfect balance of tart and sweet. The tiny seeds added a satisfying crunch, contrasting with the berries' tender flesh. For a fleeting moment, as the sweet-tart flavor burst on his tongue, the storm seemed to recede.

As Jacko devoured the berries, the young Kels who had gathered them chuckled, a sound like rolling pebbles. "Slow down, hair-boy," he said in a mix of words and mind-speak. "The storm's not going to steal them from you."

Jacko paused, juice dripping down his chin. "Sorry," he mumbled. "It's just... I've never tasted anything so good."

As the last of the berries disappeared, leaving only a lingering sweetness, the brief respite evaporated. The wind, a restless dancer, grew teeth, biting at exposed skin and whipping hair into pennants.

Jacko thought they were waiting for the storm to abate, but as minutes stretched into what felt like hours, the tempest only grew fiercer. The rain became a hammering sheet of mist that stung his skin and obscured the forest beyond a few feet. Thunder rumbled overhead, each crack seeming to split the sky itself.

To Jacko's surprise, it was precisely when the storm reached its zenith that the Kelsach stirred. As one, they rose to their feet, their massive forms suddenly alert and purposeful. The air crackled with an energy that had nothing to do with the lightning—an anticipation that made the hair on Jacko's arms stand on end.

The Giantess let out a low, sonorous call that vibrated in Jacko's chest. It was answered by the others, a harmony of deep tones that seemed to resonate with the storm. Without a word, they began to move out into the Raven Glade, their steps sure despite the slick ground and pelting rain.

Jacko hesitated, unsure of his role in whatever was about to unfold. The little Kel boy clung to him, shivering—whether from cold or fear, Jacko couldn't tell. Figuring himself for the babysitter in this strange scenario, he scooped up the child and held him close, as much for his own warmth as for the boy's. The child's wet fur pressed against Jacko's rain slicked hair which was plastered against his thin human skin, a reminder of the vast difference between them.

As the Kelsach family stepped out from under the meager shelter of the trees, the full force of the storm hit them. Wind whipped around them, carrying leaves and small branches. The rain felt like icy needles on Jacko's exposed skin. Yet the Kelsach moved forward with determination, and Jacko, clutching the boy tightly, found himself swept along in their wake.

The Kelsach moved slowly, their massive forms silhouetted against flashes of lightning. They formed a circle around the fallen female's remains. Jacko then received the first clear mind-thought. In his head, he heard what he knew must be the Giantess’s voice, “Join us and bring the boy.”

Jacko's feet, soft and vulnerable compared to the leathery soles of the Kelsach, screamed in protest with each step across the treacherous ground. He picked his way gingerly through the rough field, eyes straining in the dim light to avoid the worst obstacles. Despite his caution, every footfall brought fresh agony: here a broken pine cone jabbed like a handful of needles into his arch; there a hidden stick scraped a raw line across his heel. Sharp pebbles and jagged bits of bark conspired to torment his tender soles, each step a new lesson in pain.

The constant, bone-deep chill of the rain only amplified his misery. Jacko's body hair, usually a source of warmth, now lay plastered against his skin in saturated curls, conducting the cold rather than repelling it. Violent shivers wracked his frame, his muscles clenching and unclenching in a futile attempt to generate heat.

Gritting his teeth against the dual assault of cold and pain, Jacko tightened his grip on the Kelsach boy's small hand. Shuffling forward with halting steps, wincing at each new pinprick and slice underfoot, Jacko found he was walking almost to the rhythm of the thunder; in the midst of his pain, he was also becoming attuned to the storm’s energy. When he finally reached the circle, he took his place next to the Giantess, feet throbbing and muscles quivering, but determined to see through whatever came next.

The storm crackled and roared overhead, the lightning strikes hitting trees in the forest with enormous explosions of sound and light. The giants raised their arms to the sky, as if embracing the storm. Their long manes whipped in the wind, blending with the rain. Jacko and the little boy raised their arms, too, and Jacko could feel every wet hair continue to rise up with all the electricity in the air.

Jacko heard a bass note in the storm he couldn’t identify, a rhythmic throbbing. But then he realized the Kelsach were actually vocalizing. They began with a low, rumbling chant that moved around as if seeking a special note. Jacko and the boy both added their low tone, and then Jacko realized they were harmonizing with the thunder. It started as individual grunts and grew into a unified, mournful song orchestrated by the storm.

Jacko forgot about his misery. The chant was exhilarating, coming from deep in his chest. Then starting with Black Mane, each Kelsach knelt, pressing one hand to the ground. With their other hand, they scooped up mud and smeared it across their chests in three vertical lines. When it came his turn, Jacko, too, pressed one hand to the ground. He grabbed a handful of the black loamy mud and began the three streaks. “Life. Death. Rebirth,” slipped into his mind. He shivered again with the chill of the mud and the rain but also with the realization he was partaking of a ritual of grief that drew from the earth and was charged by the energy of the storm.

The Giantess then approached the impaled body of the mother. She gently touched the cedar shard, then pressed her forehead against it, as if absorbing the pain of her fallen sister. One by one, each of the tall ones followed. When Jacko approached, his five feet weren’t enough to reach the shard, so Black Mane lifted him. He awkwardly pressed his forehead to the bright red wood and was surprised at the arrow of light and grief that shot through him. Black Mane set Jacko down and picked up the boy who cried and shrank back, tucking his head in Black Mane’s neck. But Black Mane turned his face and held the boy so that both of their foreheads touched the shard. The boy screamed, but Black Mane held him touching the wood until he settled, then quieted, and Jacko saw that the boy had opened himself to the power they all had felt coursing through the red cedar wood.

The Kelsach then began a slow, circular dance around the body. Their footfalls were surprisingly light, once again merging with the rhythm of the thunder, mirroring the swirling winds of the storm. Jacko felt faint with the cold and pain of walking, but he was determined to stay inside the circle of giants. They were his only hope of survival.

At the ritual's peak, the Kelsach let out a long, mournful cry that ululated on the wind, a primal sound, an eerie chorus of grief and loss that pierced through Jacko's defenses, reaching something both fresh and raw and deep and forgotten within him. Jacko's own losses crashed over him: the circus burned to ashes in Vancouver, the death of his father, the carnie world he had both loved and hated, fled from yet missed. Out here in the wilderness far from Mother Russia, among giants, these personal tragedies felt like mere droplets in an ocean of shared grief and resilience.

Jacko let his own voice waver out into the sparkling night air left by the storm’s beginning retreat. He howled for his losses, for the strange events that had brought him to this mysterious family. He howled for the journey behind him and the journey he was on now. He howled with pain and cold and hunger. His voice joined with the many voices around him, and he felt every voice howled for its own losses as well as for the loss of the Mother.

As he howled, Jacko felt something shift within him. The pain, cold, and hunger that had consumed him earlier now felt distant, overshadowed by a profound sense of belonging. The storm, which had been a torment, now felt like a cleansing force. Each lash of rain had seemed to strip away another layer of his old self, transforming his cry into something wild and ancient. For the first time in his life, he wasn't an outcast or a freak—he was part of something larger, something ancient and powerful.

There was a moment of absolute stillness. In that silence, Jacko felt reborn. He was no longer just a human among Kelsach, but a vital part of this clan, bound by something far stronger than blood or appearance. Jacko noticed his body no longer shivered with cold but seemed to hum with an inner warmth that matched the energy of the Kelsach around him. The journey ahead, whatever it might hold, no longer seemed daunting. He was ready to face it, not alone, but as one of the Kels.

The storm passed and was muttering off to the north. The wind quieted, and the rain stopped. Jacko had no idea what was going to come next and was surprised when they began the solemn task of gathering the scattered remains.

The Kelsaches used obsidian flensing knives, six-inch curved knives meeting a straight handle of antler, and worked with practiced efficiency. They gathered all the pieces of the shattered head. The mandible was still attached to the back of the skull case, and the ravens had picked it clean. Black Mane sent Fern, the young Kelsach who had gathered the berries, and two other youngsters out to retrieve every possible bone fragment. Coyotes had passed through in the night, but the corpse was too muscular for them to remove even a finger or toe without starving commitment.

Using long, sweeping motions with the obsidian blades, Black Mane, the Giantess and another adult male stripped away the skin and removed the outer layers of muscle from torso and limbs. They made clean cuts through sinew and ligaments and disarticulated the long bones from their joints. The internal organs and rib cage were broken down into manageable weights.

Jacko stood under a tree shivering until the Giantess came over and gave him an image of skunk cabbage leaves. Jacko saw massive, three-foot leaves with a waxy sheen. He knew a smaller species from the wet woodlands and moist forest floors around the cave in Kostromo where he and his father had lived when he was a boy.

He remembered the stream where earlier he had stopped to drink and to watch the ravens. Those leaves had been thick and bright and the smell sulfurous, fetid. The Giantess put the Kelsach boy’s hand in Jacko’s, handed him a short, sharp knife with a comfortable bone handle and pushed them off toward the trail. The path was soft moss and dirt, unlike the logged clear-cut below, and the stream not far.

Jacko looked around and found a sturdy slab of cedar bark from a downed log. He and the boy waded into the creek. The boy was distracted by this new adventure and dove for one of the dozens of bright green frogs that leaped from the bank into the stream. Some leaped onto lily pads and the boy threw himself full-length after them. Others dove, and he dove like a little frog making a “ribbity” sound that mimicked theirs. Jacko laughed at the moment of pure joy and childhood wonder, then handed the boy the slab of cedar.

He waded deep into the jungle of elephant ear-sized skunk cabbage. He selected one and showed the boy how to position the slab just under water at the join of stem and leaf where Jacko made the cut. In this way, they moved upstream, cutting and stacking. When they had a dozen in a stack, they carried it back to the trail and found another slab. The work took them upstream, both of them invisible down in the golden forest of leaves, now backlit by the sun, each leaf translucent.

As they rounded a curve, the creek opened into a still pool beneath the sweeping branches of a massive cedar. A bull elk stood at the far end, the thick, muscular neck gleaming brown in the low light, his head crowned with a rack of antlers that were like a tangle of living branches against the sky. Jacko put his hand on the boy’s arm, but the boy was as struck by the sight as Jacko was. The elk’s presence bent the forest around it like a lodestone bends iron filings, every leaf and shadow seeming to orient itself toward the still center at the water’s edge.

The elk lowered its head to drink. When it paused, its eyes came level with Jacko’s and the boy’s. It held their gaze for a long moment in what to Jacko seemed like a profound connection. To Jacko’s show-trained eye, the elk was no performing beast. Its liquid eyes were brown and focused, deep with yet another unspoken message, this one of power and presence.

The boy moved, tree frogs plopped and yelled “ribbit!” The elk turned and faded into the shadows of the cedars. In his place were the first constellations of the blue hour.

Jacko and the boy moved the stacks of leaves back to the clearing where the butchering continued. They were next sent with the other two young Kels to tear long cedar fibers from trees. The redolent strips acted as ties as the working adults systematically secured every part of the murdered Mother into packages.

Black Mane picked up the flensed pelt and surprised Jacko by singling him out. He put the pelt down at Jaco's feet and brought out his knife. The other Kels paused in their work and gathered around to watch.

Jacko felt a flutter of alarm and had a momentary fantasy of making a run for it. Almost immediately, he knew that for an old thought and stood still, watchful.

Black Mane unrolled the pelt and shook it out. The fine furred skin was surprisingly supple and light. With sure strokes, he divided it, choosing the heart skin and holding it up to Jacko's naked body. He held out his hand to the Giantess, who handed him a length of white sisal rope. He pinched the skin at Jacko's shoulders, then smoothed it with a firm pass of the rope. The edges fused seamlessly. Jacko looked down in amazement. Black Mane was making clothes right on his body. Black Mane started to seal the shirt tight across his chest. Jacko put his hands on Black Mane’s where they were crossing his chest. With short gestures, he asked for a double row of slits where he could add cedar cord lacing. He needed to be able to put it on and off.

The same in the crotch; he needed to be able to get his equipment in and out. As he demonstrated, all the Kels rumbled with laughter. He was pretty sure there were some remarks made about the size of said equipment, but it was more than proportional to his size. He had fine brown hair on the upper half of his cock, which he didn't consider laughable at all.

Black Mane smoothed and twitched the pelt suit until it fit Jacko perfectly, fine, light and warm. Black Mane chose a tougher section of the pelt for boots, and then a cap, and a large cape that could also be a blanket roll. Jacko looked at the Kels and couldn’t figure out how they were carrying their knives, so he gestured for a belt and a knife sheath, all of which the proficient tailor Black Mane created with his knife and length of what Jacko had thought was rope but now wasn't sure. He had learned of such magical tailors during his long Journeys with the circus deep into Ireland and the other lands of fey.

When the belt fit, he held out his hand, and a straight-edged obsidian knife with a leather-wrapped handle was put into it. He slipped the knife into his tough new sheath. He stood with his head bent, thinking. The Kels had been amused by this project and now waited expectantly to see what this small creature would do next. Jacko lifted his head with a clear image of a belt pouch and a shoulder bag. The Kels all laughed, although Jacko didn't know what was so funny about a pack and a pouch. They had burden baskets and who knew what other tools. But Black Mane nodded, smiling, and obliged. Jacko felt put back together again. He had been reduced to nothing and now was redressed, re-armed, still hungry, but ready to go.

Each of them had a burden basket now, each one loaded with the green and yellow packages, even the extremities and long bones wrapped and tied for transport.

As they loaded up, Jacko took in the metallic blood scent, the smell of the pungent viscera, the wet fur from the rain-soaked Kels, the aroma of cedar, the stink of skunk cabbage. He felt dazed, as if had been sleeping and was reborn. These smells would always connect him to this time and this place in the Raven Glade mourning the Mother.

Jacko and the boy were lifted into Black Man’s basket, wrapped in the new cape.I n the stifling darkness, surrounded by the remnants of unimaginable violence, Jacko felt a paradoxical sense of peace emanating from the boy. The pelt, though born of brutality, now seemed to pulse with a mother's eternal love—a gossamer thread of tenderness woven through the fabric of horror, binding them in a tapestry of both dread and solace.

Warmth blossomed within Jacko, a stark contrast to the chill of death that had surrounded him moments before. Through gaps in the basket's weave, he glimpsed the giants emerging from the ancient forest's embrace into a world washed clean by the retreating storm. Tendrils of mist curled around their feet, parting to reveal the Great White Rope—a shimmering pathway between realms that seemed to pulse with its own ethereal light. As they approached the Great White Rope, the storm seemed to split, continuing to rage on either side but calm directly above the path. Jacko realized the storm itself was a bridge between worlds - the human world of clear skies and predictable weather on one side, and the Kelsach world of primal forces and magic on the other.

The Giantess, her form both fearsome and majestic, took the lead. With each of her steps, the Rope unfurled northward, tracing the contours of the Fraser River like a spectral guide. The Kelsach moved with a grace that belied their size, their gait swift yet eerily silent, as if gliding between the veils of reality. As they moved along the Great White Rope, Jacko noticed the storm was changing. The harsh, driving rain of the human world had gradually transformed into something else - droplets that seemed to glow faintly, falling in complex patterns that hinted at a deeper order. With each step towards Kwa-mist, Jacko felt he was not just traveling to a new place, but evolving into a being who could perceive and belong to this magical realm.

Cradled in this cocoon of fur and bone, surrounded by the remnants of horror transmuted into something sacred, Jacko felt an inexplicable peace settle over him. The boy, nestled against him, radiated a calm that seemed to resonate with the maternal energy emanating from the pelt.

As the basket swayed gently with Black Mane’s rhythmic strides, Jacko's eyelids grew heavy. The boundary between worlds blurred, and he and the boy drifted into a dreamless sleep, borne onwards to Kwa-mist on this impossible journey.